


Imported to the Wood

by ukulelemonkey



Series: An azure depth, a wordless tune [2]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Aliens, Clothed Sex, Consentacles, Other, Relationship Negotiation, Tentacles, you know what goes great with more tentacle porn? complicated emotions and depression, you know what goes great with tentacle porn? more tentacle porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 16:05:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15710616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ukulelemonkey/pseuds/ukulelemonkey
Summary: The universe beyond Mars is a cold place. It would be lonely, if Juno were alone.





	Imported to the Wood

**Author's Note:**

> When I wrote the first part, I assumed I would never come back to this 'verse. You all showed up for this fic and showered me in so much love, I couldn't not write you more! Which led to the question: how do I negotiate a universe where Juno actually left with Nureyev? I did my best. Expect more eventually. And thank you all for reading! The comments have meant a lot to me.

It’s a strange balance between them, these days. _Who knows,_ Nureyev said to him once, _what kind of trouble we could cause?_

Well, Juno’s seen trouble. He’s seen a lot of it in not a lot of time--diamond waterfalls and magma tunnels and cities reaching out past the upper atmosphere--and done his fair share to boot. Nureyev is a dazzling presence wherever he goes, sleek and seemingly at ease in the strangest and most dangerous of places. He is, of course, the strangest and most dangerous of men. Like attracting like.

Juno has learned to see himself in new shades. He’s never walked the straight edge: never saw much point in it when just asking questions was enough to get you labelled a punk, a threat, a kid up to no good.

But he’s never been _this_ before. The face behind a faceless question. The thing stepping out of the dark with the flash of a laser, the one that the people he stuns can’t quite recall, later, when they try to explain to their crime lord boss why his plasma jewels are missing.

Peter Nureyev is no Robin Hood. He’s clearly been making an effort, for Juno’s sake, to playact. Juno appreciates that as much as he can; the rest of him wonders if Nureyev is hoping he’ll loosen up his morals soon so he can get back to the darker side of his job. The one that lets him throw away individual lives and livelihoods as long as some line of mass destruction, out there on the horizon, is not crossed.

Juno misses Mars.

“It’s stupid,” he tries to back out when he lets this slip to Nureyev, one drink too many and the quiet intimacy Juno is still learning to navigate loosening his tongue.

They’re in a penthouse suite on the sixteenth floor of some hotel a system away from the Sun. It will be dark soon, but this morning Juno stood at the window and watched dunes of pink sand rolling to the sea before Nureyev woke up.

“No, I very much doubt that,” Nureyev says gently. “I won’t pry, but I won’t stand to hear the love of my life slandered like this.” He quirks a small smile, some flightiness behind his eyes that always appears when he says things like that. As if a word like _love_ will scare Juno off.

Hell, it might have. If he had anywhere to go, if he were a little worse in some ways and a little bit better in others.

“I don’t…” Juno takes a breath. It trickles slow and heavy through his lungs. “I don’t miss anything about it specifically. It’s a shithole, that whole rotten planet.” Juno hates the wistfulness he can hear in his own voice, _shithole_ and _rotten_ coming out like something holy and lost.

“I thought Mars was quite beautiful, when I wasn’t having my thumbs threatened.”

“That’s the point, Nureyev,” Juno snaps. “It looks nice on the surface, but the whole thing is sharp and rusty and if you stick around long enough you cut yourself and it infects you.”

“But you want to go back.”

“I didn’t say that.” Juno puts his head in his hands. The cushion of the sofa in their room is softer than any furniture Juno has ever owned, worth more than any place he’s ever lived.

“No, I suppose you didn’t.” Nureyev’s fingers drum thoughtfully against the couch, keeping time one half-second off from the heartbeat in Juno’s throat he hasn’t been able to swallow for three days. “But you have to, is that it?”

“This isn’t some, some--” The image of a four-year-old, unbeatable in a shiny skirt he found it so easy to pretend was chain mail and peering through the holes in a colander falling over his face, flashes through Juno’s mind. He shoves the kid away as hard as he can. “Mars doesn’t _need_ me, I know that.”

“That isn’t what I meant, Juno.” Nureyev’s voice is so soft. He’s too goddamn tender with Juno when things get like this. Juno doesn’t know what to do with it.

“Then what the hell did you mean?” Juno is about to shove himself off the sofa, get to his feet and stomp around and go somewhere, maybe, or maybe just pace a hole in the carpet, tearing at his hair until something finally breaks--

Nureyev’s slender fingers close over his.

“I’ll take you back, if that’s what you want.” His eyes are so bright it’s painful, searing an open wound somewhere under Juno’s breastbone. “A yes once is not a yes forever. I know that. I didn’t mean to steal you, Juno.”

“You--” Juno groans through gritted teeth and takes a second to loathe himself. He wishes he could shoot something, throw a punch, hold out bloody palms full of all the mistakes he’s made and get the punishment for them he deserves.

He can’t. He can’t do any of that in this room with this man, so Juno does the only other thing he ever wants and grabs Peter Nureyev by the ears to kiss him like it could shatter them both.

“Oh--!” He makes a noise of surprise against Juno’s mouth. Juno swallows it whole and presses closer to find out if he’s hiding any more in there, searching, hungry for an answer to anything at all. Nureyev kisses him back, of course. His hands are gentle on Juno’s waist. He keeps his sharp teeth out of the way of Juno’s flesh, even as Juno runs his tongue over them.

Nureyev is warm and lean under Juno’s hands. He climbs into his lap, knees tucked tight against his hips and the couch. It doesn’t take Juno out of his head, exactly; the wind is still howling in his ears and he can feel sand and blood on his face, even after all this time, the sun on whatever planet they’re on sinking into a red-black sea.

But it does send a whip-crack up Juno’s spine, the way he can’t ignore Nureyev as another living thing, putting his body against Juno’s body. His breathing, the taste of his skin…

He only kisses back, hands still and solid on Juno’s waist. He doesn’t push; he doesn’t escalate, though Juno can feel the gentle swell where his legs meet. Nureyev wants this--is happy enough, Juno knows, to take and be taken in comfort or reassurance--but he leaves the choices to Juno. This is a declaration of sorts, in that way. It cracks him open somewhere deep and crumbling.

Juno attacks the buttons of Nureyev's shirt, and Nureyev helps eagerly as soon as he realizes the goal. Juno’s shirt is next. Nureyev leans forward, as Juno struggles with his arms and face half-trapped, and kisses his chest. His lips are too soft, too tender to abide by.

Juno forgets about the shirt and reaches down again to kiss him. Teeth for teeth; begging and demands are one and the same with Nureyev, sometimes. When he’s desperate, to be precise. When some ugly need burrows into Juno’s ugly lungs, he cannot catch the breath he needs to make anything he does pretty. Nureyev has enough pretty for the both of them, Juno thinks. He runs his hands down Nureyev’s back and grabs two fistfuls of the limbs he does not hide from Juno anymore.

The honesty in that almost hurts. Juno has quite a few ways of dealing with pain.

“Touch me,” Juno pants into Nureyev’s mouth. The tentacles are already winding up Juno’s arms like a time-lapse lava flow, black and organic. Juno runs his hands over them.

No amount of time has gotten him used to the feeling: limber and strong like hard rubber, smooth and cold like dark water. Nureyev trembles under him.

“How can I--” he begins. Juno kisses his question away.

“I’ve always wondered,” Juno whispers, raising his knuckles to his lips and kissing the thin tentacles wrapped over his hand, “if I could get you off just like this. By only touching these.”

One of Nureyev’s larger tentacles wraps itself solidly around Juno’s thigh. Another slithers up his back. Juno has felt bloodless and empty for longer than he wants to think about. Everything is cold, out past the Kuiper belt and on windswept beaches and in crystal caves. The contrast of Nureyev’s skin like liquid mercury running over Juno’s reminds him he is alive. It makes him feel feverish and human. Bloody, perhaps; Juno never feels more himself than when he’s bleeding.

Nureyev gasps. Juno kisses him once, then slides off his lap and onto the floor. Even the carpets in this room are plush and flawless.

Tentacles follow Juno down like plants straining for the sun. Nureyev is caged in by the long extensions of his own body, at the center like a negative photograph of some shining saint, framed by an alien corona of black sunbeams. He takes Juno’s breath away; like nothing else.

Juno starts with the tentacles on his hands, around his wrists. He raises his own arms to his face and breathes over writhing, living flesh. They strain toward his mouth; Nureyev’s leg twitches.

“Juno,” he sighs. The way he says Juno’s name is fragile without fail. Like glass, like prismatic light through water, like something holy and precious and worth protecting.

Nobody else has ever spoken to Juno like that. That’s part of the problem, part of what rings in his chest like a gong. Or an alarm. He can’t hold that kind of power in his hands, not without shattering. Not without cutting Nureyev open on the debris.

Tentacles caress his lips. Juno parts his mouth for them, as he has again and again since the first time Nureyev bared himself to Juno with a vulnerable light in his eyes. A larger one traces over Juno’s belly and works itself under the waistband of his pants.

Juno reaches down, hand fisted around the searching tentacle. This isn’t for _him,_ this is for Nureyev. He softens his grip as he pulls the tentacle closer, running his hand along it in slow strokes.

He can’t speak with his mouth full of the slender tips of Nureyev’s tentacles, nestling in the curves of his cheeks and prodding at the pillow of his tongue. Juno doesn’t know what he would say if he could; probably something stupid.

He sucks, instead. He lets the tentacles wind their way, cautiously, into his throat. Juno reaches out and takes two more in his hands.

Another wraps around his chest. Juno presses closer and lets the long expanse of his skin become a new warm surface to slither against.

Nureyev whines, high enough to shatter glass. His eyes are half-closed, but Juno can see two thin, dim crescent moons of light below his long, dark lashes. He doesn’t hide his eyes from Juno anymore; not with his glasses off, his limbs and teeth bared.

Juno is burning up. He cannot remember the last time he reached out to touch Nureyev, but it must have been too, too long. Every point of contact soothes the frostbitten ache in him, sends magma bubbling up in his stomach and yet feels as gentle as sunlight on his back.

His jaw stretches wider, he reaches out with his tongue and licks through the ring two scale-smooth tentacles have made, winding around it. He pushes it into a cluster of them, pleading for entry to his mouth.

Nureyev’s eyes open, and Juno meets the black hole of his gaze as he fucks a fistful of tentacles with his tongue. Nureyev groans, arches his back against the sofa, and babbles a strangled but elegant string of nonsense that begins and ends with Juno’s name.

Tentacles are winding in Juno’s hair, now. The sensitive skin of his scalp prickles beneath their cool, gentle pressure. Each one feels like a rivulet of water, as if he’s kneeling beneath a refreshing rainstorm. Nureyev’s tentacles wash over him like a sacrament, and Juno cannot breathe.

Nureyev has his legs spread wide in desperation. Juno knows the signs, can see the bulge in his trousers clear as day and knows from experience how the sweat on his throat tastes.

He pulls back from the tentacles in his throat--they spasm happily at the friction from his lips, and Nureyev’s hands curl into white-knuckled fists against his thighs--to take a breath, deep into his chest.

“Look at me,” Juno croaks. Nureyev’s bright, bright eyes snap back to his face.

He reaches out again, toward Nureyev like a man begging. But Juno is not the one in desperation--not anymore. This is grounding him, this: a reminder of his body, of the blood in his veins and the solidity of his bones.

Every waiting tentacle dives toward Juno, and he takes them greedily. He knows the contrast of his skin and the strange surface of the tentacles feels as searing to Nureyev as it does for him; he knows their nerves and dextrous, fibrous muscles can feel every divot of gooseflesh on Juno’s arms, every crack in his wet lips. He pulls them in, mouth open, hands grasping, squeezing and holding and being held. Letting himself, for the first time in a long time.

With a dozen impossible limbs around his neck and weaving a pattern under his shirt, Juno breathes better than he has in weeks. He squeezes everything that passes through his hands, swallows around all the needy intrusions to his mouth.

And Nureyev--

Juno could cry himself to sleep every night to the beauty of the sounds pouring out of Nureyev. Melodic, dipping outside the range of Juno’s human hearing, Peter _sings_ with it.

The curtain of black tentacles parts before Juno’s eyes, just in time to watch Nureyev’s mouth fall open wide enough to see the teeth at the back of his mouth, fang-like where his molars should be. His hips lift off the couch and his tentacles pulse around Juno’s body; he nearly lifts Juno right off the ground.

Nureyev howls. His long, pale fingers claw at the fabric of the sofa.

A moment passes. Juno slows his movements against the tentacles, which pause and go limp and slough off of him. They lie against the white surface of the sofa and across the floor like kelp washed up on the beach. One is still draped over Juno’s shoulder.

Juno’s eyes follow their dark, winding trails up to the core of Nureyev’s body. He’s gone limp, too. His chest rises and falls, sea-foam in the tide.

“Oh,” Nureyev breathes. His mouth makes the shape of some other word, some quip or question that he likes to punctuate these moments of aftermath with.

He gives up, and instead he laughs: a dry, gentle chuckle that spreads over Juno’s skin like a balm.

“That answers my question, I guess,” Juno mutters. He pulls himself up off the floor and into Nureyev’s lap. Juno is hard in his own trousers, but he feels no urgency for the moment.

“But does it answer mine?” Nureyev asks. A blue edge of melancholy stains his words.

“You can bring me back to Mars,” Juno says, leaning his forehead against the hard line of Nureyev’s thin shoulder, “on one condition.”

“Oh? Are we bartering now?” Nureyev sounds more hopeful. That warms Juno inside; it’s how he should always sound.

“Yeah,” Juno replies. “As long as you come back.”

“I see.” Nureyev lays a damp palm against Juno’s neck, nudges him away until they are looking eye-to-eye. “I think,” he says, “that sounds like a fair trade.”

His smile crinkles the edges of his eyes. They glow faintly in the dim light, sun set since they started and unremarked-upon.

Juno leans in, and seals their agreement with a gift as old as deals, as this-for-that.

Outside, the wind shapes and reshapes the dunes. Somewhere, there is cheering and celebration and light. Up, high above, a red dot twinkles in the sky, waiting for its goddess to come home.


End file.
